PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds to add vaulting, climbing

The splendid Battle Royale ’em up PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds [official site] is to get a whole lot more agile with the addition of climbing and vaulting, creator Brendan ‘PlayerUnknown’ Greene has revealed at E3. I am mighty excited about the prospect of leaping over fences, climbing up walls, rolling over cars, and diving through windows, as this clunkiness of obstacles has been a minor concern for me and I wasn’t sure quite what the plan was. Turns out, the answer is swish movement that should make gunfights more exciting. Have a look in this trailer:

That was shown during the PC Gaming Show today, the presentation organised by the professional RPS LARPers at PC Gamer.

Looks good, doesn’t it? Fancy animations (and some new clothes?). I can think of so many fights that would’ve played out differently if I could smoothly leap over a fence or dive out a window. As much as I adore Plunkbat, interactions with its environment are limited and that limits options. Too much stuff is just there to duck behind – or be trapped by.

I don’t tend to buy games in early access so it’s quite exciting to me that one I enjoy is about to take a big step in a direction I like. Had this agility been in from the start, I wouldn’t have commented much on it. Now it’s being added, hey, this is great news.

The new fog and dusk variants look good too. Greene reiterated that developers Bluehole Studio are working on two new maps too.

And that new gun at the end? Ah, the OTs-14 Groza bullpup rifle will be found in supply drop crates and, as I’ve only successfully grabbed two, I imagine I’ll come to know it mostly from the business end.

No firm word on when all this will launch. Big features tend to arrive in monthly updates. Greene said this month’s will focus on improving server performance, which will be welcome but I’d be delighted if these new moves snuck in too.